Worlds Away

Worlds Away

“There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away,” writes Emily Dickinson in her poem “The Book.” And even before I knew those words of hers, I believed them.

Books have been my favorite mode of travel since I could tie my own shoes. They’ve carried me from Oz to Narnia, through caves and bogs and seas and forests, and even through wrinkles in time.

Of all the books I’ve known and loved since childhood, one has carried me farther than all the others combined: the Holy Bible. Its stories and characters are the ones most deeply ingrained in memory: Jonah swallowed up by the great fish. Noah building an ark and floating above the mountain peaks in it. Baby Moses, found in the river by an Egyptian princess, and shepherd boy David, whose slingshot and fearlessness slew giants.

Then there are the Gospel stories—the most magical ones of all—where Jesus walked and talked, and water became wine, and fish and loaves multiplied in one great picnic with leftovers galore. Where blind men got their sight back and where the wildest waves imaginable were tamed by a word from the one who made them.

In my childhood home we had a big coffee-table Bible that I remember being drawn to, not for reading, but for its elaborate cover and colored pictures. My own tiny first Bible with my name stamped in gold was more portable and child friendly. It had pictures too—a comforting one of the Nativity and a dark, brooding one of three crosses on a hill.

My other books did indeed take me worlds away, but only the Bible had the power to bring its Protagonist into my world and change it—and me—by his presence. Other books were for a time, and that time has come and gone. But I can’t imagine a day when I won’t ask this book to tell me its old, old story all over again.

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, generous inside and out, true from start to finish.

John 1:14, MSG